H. G. Wells eBook

I

INTRODUCTION

THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS

In his Preface to the Unpleasant Plays, Mr
Shaw boasts his possession of “normal sight.”
The adjective is the oculist’s, and the application
of it is Mr Shaw’s, but while the phrase is misleading
until it is explained to suit a particular purpose,
it has a pleasing adaptability, and I can find none
better as a key to the works of Mr H.G. Wells.

We need not bungle over the word “normal,”
in any attempt to meet the academic objection that
it implies conformity to type. In this connection,
the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated
from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears
no glasses; and if a few happy people still exist
here and there who have no need for the mere physical
assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook
is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form
of bias is so small that we regard them as inspired
or criminal according to the inclination of our own
beloved predilection. And no spectacles will
correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a
fact that is often a cause of considerable annoyance
to the possessors of normal sight. That defect
of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements
of early training, persists and increases throughout
life, like other forms of myopia. The man who
sees a ball as slightly flattened, like a tangerine
orange too tightly packed (an “oblate spheroid”
would be the physicist’s brief description),
seeks the society of other men who share his illusion;
and the company of them take arms against the opposing
faction, which is confirmed in the belief that the
ball is egg-shaped, that the bulge, in fact, is not
“oblate” but “prolate.”

I will not elaborate the parable; it is sufficient
to indicate that in my reading of Mr Wells, I have
seen him as regarding all life from a reasonable distance.
By good fortune he avoided the influences of his early
training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent
mark upon him. His readers may infer, from certain
descriptions in Kipps, and The History of
Mr Polly, that Wells himself sincerely regrets
the inadequacies of that “private school of dingy
aspect and still dingier pretensions, where there
were no object lessons, and the studies of book-keeping
and French were pursued (but never effectually overtaken)
under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, who wore
a nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate,
explained nothing, and used a cane with remarkable
dexterity and gusto.” But, properly considered,
that inadequate elderly gentleman may be regarded as
our benefactor. If he had been more apt in his
methods, he might have influenced the blessed normality
of his pupil, and bound upon him the spectacles of
his own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might have
been born into the leisured classes, and sent to Eton
and Christchurch, and if his genius had found any
expression after that awful experience, he would probably,
at the best, have written polite essays or a history
of Napoleon, during the intervals of his leisured activity
as a member of the Upper House.